A STORY ABOUT DIAMONDS AND KETCHUP
BY LEO ROSS
At the bottom of a microscopic hole, pushed down millimeters by a force improbable, a little speck of ketchup was stuck in the middle of the LeGrand diamond. This was sure to cause quite a stir.
“Well surely we can not sell it,” said one jeweler to the other.
“What do you mean we can’t sell it?” The jeweler replied, chorting down the last inch of his hot dog. “This is the biggest diamond I have ever seen.”
And so the LeGrand diamond went to market, was appraised, and became one of the most expensive diamonds in the world. Thus, that improbable speck of ketchup that lived inside it became the hottest debate topic in the international diamond community.
“Well surely the ketchup must bring down the value,” said some. “I mean, there is a food particle stuck inside it. Soon it will start to smell!”
“Well let me ask you this!” Others would reply. “How many other diamonds do you know that have ketchup inside them? Plus, have you seen how big it is?”
And so the debate raged on. The LeGrand diamond gained publicity. The image of this condiment-flecked jewel became a symbol of unimaginable wealth, so that when one wanted to assert their status, they would claim that “their refrigerator is decked out in LeGrands.” Obviously this was untrue; there was only one LeGrand diamond.
Some met the increased demand with imitation, some with forgery. Many tried to create their own LeGrands by injecting diamonds with ketchup in their warehouses All of these attempts failed. Something about the viscosity of the ketchup made it extremely difficult to insert into a diamond on purpose. Really, it is something that has to happen naturally.
Nevertheless, those that wanted a piece of the LeGrand fortune and couldn’t find their way in through science decided to lie their way into the market. They injected diamonds with lesser-grade sauces like marinara or russian dressing. Even these forgeries sold for upwards of $500,000, to give you an idea of the size and value of the real LeGrand diamond.
The real LeGrand diamond, at this time, was double-locked inside two bullet-proof plexiglass boxes in the middle of a long empty hallway that belonged to a rich French family. The French family, though rich enough to own such a long empty hallway and a chateau large enough to put it in, were not actually wealthy enough to own the LeGrand diamond. They were, however, rich enough to be close family friends with the jewelers who first received the diamond and were now holding onto it for them until they could find a suitable buyer.
Every day, the teenage son of this French family, a boy named Phillippe, would find excuses to cut through the unused hallway that contained the LeGrand in order to take a closer look at it. He would peer through the two boxes surrounding the diamond and watch how the red shade of the speck of ketchup would refract in the diamond, bouncing inside the precious jewel until it turned a light orange. Often, Phillippe would stare at the diamond so long that he would find himself sitting cross-legged on the floor at the tail-end of his fourth hour of observation, looking up into the diamond, with no recollection of ever stopping to look at it in the first place.
The LeGrand did have a buyer as well. The man that eventually bought it was the CEO of a major experimental car company, and he planned to use it to engage to his younger girlfriend. The jewelers and the French family tried to warn the man that the LeGrand diamond, with its unusual coloring and extreme size, would make for a poor wedding ring, but the man refused to hear it.
When the man received the diamond, he looked at it and began to brainstorm how he could say the jewelers and the French family misled him. They were entirely right, of course. The LeGrand, a far cry from the normal dot of diamond that marks most wedding rings, was cut from a large chunk of diamond around the size of a potato. The finished diamond would not fit nicely on a ring.
At the same time, the diamond looked wrong. In place of the brilliant clarity of a choice diamond, the LeGrand appeared to hold a clementine-colored cloud. While this effect added to the diamond’s intrigue, it did not make the LeGrand look especially nice on one’s finger, or around one’s neck as the CEO was slowly realizing would have to be the case.
But, at the end of the day, the CEO decided that the story and symbolism of the LeGrand diamond was more important to him than its actual practicality. He decided that he would, in fact, propose to his younger girlfriend with the LeGrand.
And so the LeGrand was shipped from its dusty hallway in the French chateau to a high-class jewelry maker in Orange County, California, where robot arms began to assemble the mount that would eventually hold the diamond, swinging like a pendulum, around a young woman’s neck. At the chateau, Philippe was shattered. He knew that this day would come, and yet so much of his life had come to center around the LeGrand that he was never truly able to visualize what it would be like. As a result, his brain never had time to prepare, to plan alternate routes around the parts of his day that formerly belonged to the LeGrand. He began to short-circuit, in a sense. When it came time to admire the condiment-filled treasure, Philippe would wander all the way down to its former resting place, only to suddenly remember that it was now gone. He would take short, jagged paces in the doorway, struggling to figure out where he wanted to go, before finding himself somewhere else in the house, staring at some other object. But where the LeGrand used to provide him with hours of philosophical contemplation, hours spent looking into its foggy depths and pondering the fantastic world that could create such magical coincidences, his new subjects gave him nothing. He would spend hours pondering a patch of ivy or a screw in the wall, only to discover in them a patch of ivy and a screw in the wall.
The only source that ever gave his brain fuel anymore was the television. He would sit in front of an old box set high in the corner of a rectangular thatched structure in his backyard, watching coverage of the mysterious purchase of the LeGrand diamond, eating french fries and sipping a Pina Colada enviously. The television only ever fed him rage, none of the delicious, multi-colored sensations he used to unlock within the diamond, but it was better than the infernal blankness of his recent silent fits. It would have to do.
The public knew that the legendary LeGrand diamond had been purchased, but nobody knew by whom. The CEO had made sure that this was so. Though he personally owned more objects than the combined assets of the entire continent of South America, he was determined to present as a normal guy. His proposal, while making use of the incredible diamond, would have the awkward charm of any other normal person romance that he could imagine.
And so, on that TV in the thatched corner, Philippe would watch throat-necked commentators speculate on who the owner of the LeGrand diamond could be.
“Well surely we can all agree that whoever it is, they must be very rich,” one would say to the other.
“Of course! Have you seen how big the thing is! And there’s ketchup inside of it!”
And their necks would throb, and Philippe’s pina colada would go fsss.
When the day finally came, the CEO took his younger girlfriend to a barbecue restaurant on the
side of a small highway. The interior was decorated with false wood and servers wore aprons tied at the bottom of their red shirts. In his briefcase, the CEO held the world’s largest and most improbable diamond.
The pair sat down. They ordered sugary drinks, tinted green with artificial flavoring. They talked for a little, and then ordered their dinners when the server came back. The woman, a vegetarian, ordered collard greens and mashed potatoes, while the man ordered a plain burger and fries. They ordered a bowl of mac and cheese to start.
The food started to arrive. The man was nervous, felt his shirtsleeves tugging him down towards his briefcase, where he knew an object of enormous weight lay shunted away from the light it deserved. The gravitational pull of the object was strong, but he wanted to finish dinner first before he took it out and presented it to his girlfriend. He wanted to have a full stomach.
The mac and cheese arrived, and the couple ate the warm, dripping pasta with a casual intimacy. Then came the collard greens and the mashed potatoes, and the burger, totally dry and barren between two stale buns, just like he liked it. The CEO filled a bowl up with ketchup, a practice he picked up in college. His plan was to dip his dry burger into this bowl to lubricate its passage down his throat, eat the whole thing, digest, and then get engaged to his girlfriend. But he held the burger in his hands, and he realized he couldn’t wait that long. He put the burger down on his plate and looked in the eyes of his younger girlfriend.
“I bet you’ve been wondering why I brought a briefcase to dinner,” he said.
His girlfriend nodded. The man picked up the briefcase.
“In this briefcase I have the LeGrand diamond,” said the man. He said it loud enough to just
barely get the attention of the dining room. They looked up from their food. He opened the briefcase. Inside was indeed the LeGrand diamond, encased in a white silver necklace.
The man picked it up. “I am giving you this diamond because I intend to-”
And the man dropped the diamond. It fell into the bowl of ketchup, its enormous weight causing tidal waves of the sauce to erupt into the sky. Everywhere, little particles of ketchup floated around the room, descending like snowflakes.
In a stroke of astounding, stupendous luck, each of these drops of ketchup landed inside the diamonds adorning the wedding rings and watches of restaurant patrons sitting around the CEO. In an event that could not have been predicted in a million years, just as the camera crews were rolling up to announce the discovery of the whereabouts of the LeGrand diamond, hundreds of LeGrand diamonds were being created. Back at the chateau, Philippe pounded the table in astonishment, knocking over his pina colada and causing the ketchup covering his french fries to create another LeGrand diamond. In the newsroom, the newscasters, playing absentmindedly with ketchup packets in between takes, created fifteen more. The LeGrand counterfeiters turned to notice that their painstakingly developed diamond-filling machines suddenly kicking into gear, creating perfect LeGrand diamonds every second. The international diamond community threw up their hands in disgust, tossing countless diamonds in the air which also ended up in ketchup bowls, making hundreds more. And, back at the jewelers, the one jeweler looked down and saw that a little speck of ketchup had fallen off his hot dog and landed in a diamond he was cutting.
He jabbed the other jeweler.
“Well would you look at that, eh?” He said.
The other jeweler looked at the new diamond, a microscopic bit of ketchup suspended in the middle.
“Worthless,” he said. “Absolutely worthless.”